Direct oceanic emissions unlikely to account for the missing source of atmospheric carbonyl sulfide

Lennartz, S.T. ... et. al.-- 18 pages, 5 figures, 5 tables, 1 appendix, supplement https://dx.doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-385-2017-supplementThe climate active trace-gas carbonyl sulfide (OCS) is the most abundant sulfur gas in the atmosphere. A missing source in its atmospheric budget is currently suggested, resulting from an upward revision of the vegetation sink. Tropical oceanic emissions have been proposed to close the resulting gap in the atmospheric budget. We present a bottom-up approach including (i) new observations of OCS in surface waters of the tropical Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans and (ii) a further improved global box model to show that direct OCS emissions are unlikely to account for the missing source. The box model suggests an undersaturation of the surface water with respect to OCS integrated over the entire tropical ocean area and, further, global annual direct emissions of OCS well below that suggested by top-down estimates. In addition, we discuss the potential of indirect emission from CS2 and dimethylsulfide (DMS) to account for the gap in the atmospheric budget. This bottom-up estimate of oceanic emissions has implications for using OCS as a proxy for global terrestrial CO2 uptake, which is currently impeded by the inadequate quantification of atmospheric OCS sources and sinksThis work was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research through the project ROMIC-THREAT (BMBF-FK01LG1217A and 01LG1217B) and ROMIC-SPITFIRE (BMBF-FKZ: 01LG1205C). Additional funding for Christa A. Marandino and Sinikka T. Lennartz came from the Helmholtz Young Investigator Group of Christa A. Marandino (TRASE-EC, VH-NG-819), from the Helmholtz Association through the President’s Initiative and Networking Fund, and from the GEOMAR Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel. Kirstin Krüger acknowledges financial support from the EU FP7 StratoClim project (603557), and Pau Cortes and Rafel Simo acknowledge support from the Spanish MINECO through PEGASO (CTM2012-37615)Peer Reviewe